The Cossack

Never start a walk after 7:00 a.m. in our neighborhood.

Never, never, never, never.

Daylight comes later and later these days. Daylight savings will force us unto even a darker morning walk. And our body rhythms, challenging jobs, and late reading habits (not to mention "age") grant permission for delayed rising on Saturdays. But we must not oversleep.

If one lays abed and gets a late start to our park on Saturday, one risks the daycare rush.

If you choose to read the "rant,"  you may check out the post marked - THE RANT. Otherwise, here is the rest of the walk:

DH and I chose to avoid the morning crowds today and headed down our dirt track, knowing that the deer would be long gone. There was already too much movement and too much noise for any self-respecting wild creature to hang around.

Still, we noted the large fruit of the nightshade - easily three times the size of last year's. (The camera is recharging today so we will attempt to grab some photos tomorrow.) The sporadic rains of the summer must have come at the right time for these plants to produce surprisingly large "tomatoes." But beware. I will remind you that every part of this variety of nightshade is extremely toxic. Nothing eats the flowers or leaves or beautiful yellow fruit.

The meadows were all empty, but the behavior of the dogs (sniffing the air) and the sounds in the woods gave evidence that the deer had been in the area that morning. We just missed them.

The pups and I took a short detour to follow a path into the woods. As the brush dies down in the fall, we can see clearings within and, when accompanied by DH, I am brave.  We turned back to the road just in time to see a large buck crossing some 20 or so yards ahead of us. We took a few steps and a doe started across,  followed by a yearling. We each held our breath as they stopped, saw us, and fled to the brush.

Of course! I never have a camera with me on days when we are this close (To be honest, we are rarely this close and, when we are, there is usually little time to turn the camera on before the creatures disappear.).

The dogs almost dragged me to the spot where the deer had been. They gathered all the smells they could. DH and I laughed at our good fortune.

Then on our way home, we discussed age and exercise, energy and grey hair. DH commented about how his still dark hair came from the Cossacks.

The COSSACKS?!

It seems that the brothers who accompanied his maternal great grandmother were big men with dark hair. The family jokingly referred to them as "the Cossacks." [The family fled their home in Odessa, Ukraine around the turn of the century.]

I was stunned. This was a NEW story coming out after some 33 years of stories. How could this be? But, in thinking about it, I realized that I too have more stories to tell. We have years of remembered stories to share and shared stories to remember.

And, I now have another term of endearment for DH.

The Cossack and I continued on our way home telling tales and filling our morning with laughter.